Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to enable content communication between a client device and a remote server device and more specifically enabling generation of transition graphics locally at the client device for content provided by the remote server device.
Description of the Related Art
With the advent and growing popularity of thin clients and smart terminals, various techniques have evolved to provide services on these devices. Techniques leveraging remote control services, such as Terminal Services, Application Publishing, Terminal Emulators, etc., are used to send image data to a terminal or thin client. The image data is rendered locally on the thin clients/terminals and commands/feedback from the terminals/thin clients are sent back to the underlying server-based Operating System (OS) for interpretation. As a result, any graphical interactions sent via the terminal protocol to the thin client/terminal are solely generated within the original OS. Although some interactions, such as local mouse rendering, are conducted locally, such interactions are limited in value.
With the rising popularity of shared services, more and more applications are moved into the “Cloud” for sharing. As more devices, such as tablets and smart-phones are generated and more applications related to terminal services are moved to the cloud, a rift has developed between the Cloud OS, which is predominantly classic Desktop based systems, and the default experience expected from the edge tablet/smart-phone devices. For instance, the smart-phone and tablet devices include features, such as transitions, swipe gestures, etc., while the cloud-based OS graphics are predominantly single page refreshes, videos, scrolling pages, etc.
One way of addressing the rift is to try and embed such transitions/gestures, etc., into the traditional desktop applications executing on the cloud OS. However, such endeavors have proven to be very costly from a development standpoint and network resource standpoint. For instance, all the transitions being generated at the cloud OS for the terminal services have to be transmitted over the network to the tablet/smart-phone devices, resulting in the transmission of huge burst of data leading to higher bandwidth usage. This means that every single pixel of screen data that changes/moves has to be transmitted from the cloud-based application to the terminal services at the edge devices (such as tablet, smart-phones, etc.).
It would be advantageous to minimize network resource usage while allowing the features designed for the edge devices to be executed without making changes to the application executing on the server. It would also be advantageous to allow transitions to occur locally at the edge devices while maintaining and serving the content from a central location. It would also be advantageous to separate client-server execution layer from user interaction layer so as to provide a more cost effective technique with minimal changes to the portion of the application executing on the cloud OS.
It is in this context, embodiments of the invention arise.